GOP pols oppose smut-free wireless network proposal

FCC Chair Kevin Martin's fellow Republicans are giving him a hard time about …

One might think that Republicans would love Federal Communications Commission chair Kevin Martin's plan for a smutless, free, broadband system. But that's not the way it's playing out, at least for now. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce's two top GOP members have sent Martin a letter that calls for the FCC to drop the proposed service, which the winner of a spectrum auction will run.

"It seems to us that your proposed auction conditions are going to discourage certain parties from bidding," ranking Energy Committee members Joe Barton (R-TX) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) wrote to the Commission Chair on the last day of June. "Our understanding is that there are more than 40 small, medium, and large carriers that would be interested in bidding on the spectrum if it didn't have the service conditions."

As Ars has reported, despite considerable opposition, the FCC launched a proceeding last month on whether agency should offer the service in the 2155-2180MHz band, a zone of the so-called Advanced Wireless Services 3 (AWS-3) spectrum. The winner of the sale would filter smut out of the stream, provide it to most of the country within a decade, and fork over five percent of gross revenues to the United States Treasury every year.

Barton and Stearns' letter pretty much reads from the script sheet of CTIA - The Wireless Association, QUALCOMM, T-Mobile and other parties who worry that the proposed service will cause interference in the nearby AWS-1 spectrum area. The congress members also protest that Martin's proposal tailors the AWS-3 region "largely to the business model of a single party," language not terribly different from CTIA's recent charge that it would "skew an auction to the benefit of one entity or business model." That entity would probably be M2Z Networks, which has long advocated the filtered free wireless idea and meets regularly with the FCC to boost the concept.

D Block dig

The two House reps conclude their missive with a swipe at the FCC's so far unsuccessful 700 MHz D-Block plan, in which the agency sought to auction a big swath of spectrum to a bidder who would share the region with public safety agencies. The D Block turned out to be the only part of the 700MHz spectrum selloff that didn't get bought when the auction concluded in March. We Told You So, Barton and Stearns said, mentioning a letter they wrote last year warning that "dictating particular business models" would discourage bidders, fail to produce a candidate to build the network, "crowd out smaller and rural wireless carriers," and reduce the total amount of auction money raised. "Our predictions proved right," they crow.

Now the FCC should explore how much money an AWS-3 auction would raise without conditions, Barton and Stearns advise. "We need answers to this question to evaluate whether Congress should direct those proceeds toward construction of a public safety network, especially if a D-Block auction with public safety conditions were to fail again," they conclude.

That last line is significant, because it hints at growing Congressional sentiment towards dropping the public/private scheme and just funding a public safety system outright. Jane Harman (D-CA) has introduced legislation in the House that would provide at least some government money for the project.

But where are all those Republicans who last year told the FCC that M2Z's free, smutless plan was a grand idea? Where is Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), who in March of 2007 wrote that while "generally supportive of auctioning spectrum, I feel that the fee arrangement proposed by M2Z will, over time, fairly compensate the public for the use of bandwidth which is otherwise of little commercial value." Or Senator Orin Hatch of Utah? "I know many Utahns would welcome the opportunity to provide their children with the educational and economic opportunity which broadband access can provide," Hatch wrote to the Commission in February of last year, "without having to become software engineers in order to protect their children."

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.